Can You Write a Novel as a Group? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-you-write-a-novel-as-a-group <comment> phoe-krk A lot of online roleplaying is exactly that: two or more people cooperatively telling a story. (Disclosure: been roleplaying online for over 15 years.)

I am actually in the process of writing a tool that facilitates that process and allows one to edit, manage, reorder individual posts and paragraphs, and spatially order them on a timeline. I'll throw it at HN when it's ready enough.

<comment><USER2> What platform and tools are you building with, and how far in? I created a roleplaying iOS (swift) app and Vue website, both on a shared Elixir Phoenix / Postgres / Elastic Search backend which currently has 1.5k DAU / 50k daily messages exchanged that I haven't created such tools for yet. Possible collaboration? [https://apple.co/2jV2ZOa](https://apple.co/2jV2ZOa)

<comment> phoe-krk Common Lisp + Qt + PostgreSQL so far. I haven't seen your tool yet, but it does look similar to what I've been thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have written portions of a few novella-length chain stories on bulletin boards.

If you ran the whole board topic through a style filter and then edited it for consistency and continuity, one or two might even be somewhat readable.

My guess is that you need a number of editors proportional to the square root of the number of authors, and anything greater than two authors requires a style manual, character reference guides, and a story map. Otherwise it's kind of a disconnected mess, with dangling plot hooks everywhere.

In order to not kill the topic, you have to write it sort of like comic pages, where there's a miniature cliffhanger in the last panel, to get you to turn the page. Except you're goading the next person to pick up the story and carry it for a few more paragraphs.

If it goes on for long, you get a sense for which of the regular posters should be next. It's been a while since we had some expository dialogue, so everybody waits for X to post. Y likes to write thrilling action scenes. Z drops in romantic subplots. W inserts political intrigues. U throws in gratuitous plot twists. T is the troll that tries to kill all the characters and burn all the scene settings in every post. S explains, after every T post, about the recurring nightmares that one of the characters has every night.

Mainly, the fun is that you get to see the story unfold without doing all the work to make it unfold.

</comment><comment><USER4> An earlier group-penned novel "Naked Came the Stranger" was published in the late 60s. It was written by a bunch of newspaper journalists as a joke poking fun at other novels of that era. It became a bestseller. Some years after it was published—when I was in my budding adolescence—I discovered it in my parents' library and devoured it although I didn't understand everything in the story. My mother was a bit aghast when she found it in my room.

<comment><USER5> A more recent homage to this is "The Diamond Club" by Patricia Harkins-Bradley which was created by listeners of a podcast as a parody of 50 Shades of Grey [http://dctvpedia.com/The_Diamond_Club:_A_Novel](http://dctvpedia.com/The_Diamond_Club:_A_Novel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can do anything with writing. There are no rules. Whether the world likes the outcome is a different story altogether.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why would anyone _want_ to do that?

It seems to me like humans have a basic desire/need to see their own creativity come to life and to truly take ownership over that creation without other people meddling. This human need largely goes unserved in our economic system which, in my mind, explains why someone would opt to work on open source software on a weekend writing more code, after having spent a 40-hour- workweek having written code, or to write a book about marketing, after having spent a 40-hour-workweek having worked in marketing, etc.

So, if you are going to go to the trouble of writing a novel, how on earth would it occur to you to not avail yourself of the opportunity to satisfy that need?

<comment><USER2> Because humans are social animals, and far more people seem to have a need for social contact than to see their own creativity come to life, as evidenced by what most people spend their free time doing (not writing code or books, but enjoying time with family and friends). A creative social activity viewed as an enhanced social activity instead of a degraded creative one is perhaps the perspective you're looking for?

<comment><USER7> No, not particularly what I'm looking for, but it's probably to do with my own personality traits rather than any universal truth... You make a valid point.

But the thing about human desires is that, typically, you want to fulfill _all_ of them, and you can easily satisfy the need for creativeness by working on a book solo for a couple of hours, then satisfy the need to socialize by helping your significant other out cooking a meal and raising a child.

To speculate a bit further: I would suppose that lack-of-creative-outlet is more likely to be unmet as a basic human desire in most people than lack-of- socializing, although I do grant that loneliness is on the rise.

And, last but not least, if the goal of writing the novel is to write a _good_ novel, there's an argument to be made that creative endeavor is what it's actually _about_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone seen an "overview of the design/possibility space" for group writing?

For illustration, single authors have interacted with support communities in a variety of ways, from blogging almost complete chapters, to discussion forums brainstorming plots and characters. What are some others? And how does single and group authorship blend, given early readers, and writing groups, and collaborative research, and so on?

I don't have a feel for the design space. This post prompted the thought that it's richer than I'd been considering.

I've failed at creating social infrastructure for a hobby project around transformative improvement of science education content. It seems clear I'd need a diverse hybrid of multiple support processes, but the path to minimum viable process has been a challenge. So I'm hoping for "oh... _that 's_ an interesting possibility I'd not considered" fodder, as I found this post to be.

</comment><comment><USER9> _in 1969, twenty-five Newsday journalists published an erotic novel called "Naked Came the Stranger," under the name Penelope Ashe, with a deliberately inconsistent style—the group's ringleader wanted to prove an ironic point that any book could succeed if it was filthy enough. (The novel became a best- seller; the hoax aspect, revealed a few weeks after its release, was a boon to publicity.)_

Someone wrote a hilarious oral history of _Naked Came The Stranger_ : [https://www.wnyc.org/story/naked-came-stranger-oral- history/](https://www.wnyc.org/story/naked-came-stranger-oral-history/). It's all writing and presumably SFW, as well as being an amazing story—and perhaps an amazing story about recognizing market conditions, then capitalizing on them.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember doing this with a friend via email in college.

The rules were loose but you would write about a paragraph of the story and email it back. The experience was unique. You had some control of the story but not full control. You were both along for the ride and the story felt unique.

</comment><comment><USER11> Being overly focused on the "lit fic" genre they've overlooked the Wild Cards series, one of George RR Martin's projects. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards) 25+ books, a pending TV show. Most books being mosaic novels with individual chapters written by specific writers, some standalone novels.

Disclosure I've been a publisher of works in this series, but the glue that has kept this project together is their contract. If an author kills or damages a character they give up their share of revenue which stops people from painting characters into impossible corners.

</comment><comment><USER12> I lurked around when The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra was written. It was absolute chaos, but very entertaining. The collaborative environment was extremely hostile though still productive. The open google docs text was repeatedly vandalized and deleted. With version control handled ad hoc by the authors. Even the (self)publication process ended up running in parallel with multiple different covers and prints (and lot of accusations of people profiting from printed copies).

I don't know if you can call the book a novel, or even readable. But there is an attempt at a plot somewhere in the mess of Tao Lin flavoured chan-style prose.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is unusual but not that rare. When I was younger I wrote half a hard- boiled detective novel with a friend, alternating scenes every week or so over email. We even had a rule that we wouldn't discuss the direction of the plot, which lead to some amusing twists.

Plenty of books and more that one author (sometimes credited, sometimes not). Things like movie tie-in or spin-off novels might pass through several hands to ensure brand-consistancy before being published.

This group seemed to have a lot of fun (and success). I am slightly jealous.

</comment><comment><USER14> What a silly question...what do they think "writers rooms" do? Most movies and TV is written in writers rooms.

There is not enough money in novels to bother but it is trivial if needed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I worked on one at StarText in 1983 or 1984, a bunch of people wrote various chapters most of which were almost unrelated to other chapters, then I wrote the final chapter somehow bringing all the parts together. I'm sure it's long gone to bit dust.

</comment><comment><USER16> reminds me of this [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights)

</comment><comment><USER17> You can do/create anything as a group. Whether it will be good is another question.</comment>


Ask HN: What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? - <AUTHOR>

What features would you like to see included in Delcious, Stumble etc? Is there a big gap in social bookmarking that has not been plugged? <comment><USER2> No.

(Personally, I wouldn't try making yet another social bookmarking site. The only way I can see of competing with the existing players is to market it better so that you get users who've never heard of Digg/Reddit/SU/Delicious/etc. Hint: Facebook app, viral features. But I'm not sure how succesful at making money these sites are.)

</comment><comment><USER3> * Universal (cross-platform, cross-browser) synchronisation.

* Tracking my most-searched-then-clicked-on links, and showing them in a "Personal Top 10" stack for quick viewing, which in turn would be its' own bookmark folder.

<comment><USER4> What would be the implications of combining surfing history and bookmarking -- outside the "privacy" concern. If I noticed that you visited page X lots of times should it be considered bookmark worthy?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I would have many concerns over "privacy" with the number of times I visit "CSS Colour Wheel" or my items tagged "cheatsheet".

It is not so much surfing history, but more a question of how likely I am to want to go to a certain link when I visit my bookmarks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Full-text search over the pages you've bookmarked. For me, the Firefox address bar (with its rapid search of your browser cache) has made sites like Delicious obsolete. The only webapp I'm aware of that lets you do this is Google Bookmarks (which is asocial).

I'm still waiting for someone to bring the pleasure of the Firefox address bar to a social site. I created a webapp that does this last summer (Quocial.com; I can send you an invite if you like, but be warned that I'm no longer maintaining the site), but the technical difficulties of full-text search are such that it really only makes sense for someone like Google or Microsoft/Yahoo to do this. Or, Twitter could start crawling links and letting you run full-text search over either your links or those of the folks you're following (though I'd rather not make each and every one of my links public).

In short, the social bookmarking game isn't over yet. I firmly believe that Delicious-style tagging will give way to full-text search. One of these days, someone's going to nail it.

<comment><USER6> Diigo does allow you to search the full-text of your bookmarks. Actually, it is the only that does this that I know of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd really like to hear joshu's (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joshu>) take on this.

</comment><comment><USER8> We have tried to take on the social bookmaking world with out site www.favilous.com - we will take on board all these comments. Some people have said they want to read links later; you can do this using our site. We also introducing a Yammer type service for networks of people to bookmark and share their bookmarks and documents with each other on their network. Thanks for the comments-really helps.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just installed Read It Later (<http://readitlaterlist.com>) so I can bookmark links which are interesting tweets to my followers. They have an API, which could be used to automate some of the work needed to prepare the tweets.

</comment><comment><USER10> Diigo has about everything I want except a great iPhone app and higher popularity.

</comment><comment><USER11> The field is still so new you are better off actually implementing some features you think are missing rather than taking surveys about them. Nobody really thought anything was missing when del.icio.us started, either.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only issue I find is that the popularity of such sites seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of interesting content in there. IMHO, Pinboard (pinboard.in) solves this problem quite nicely.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the answer is in why so many people are enjoying Instapaper. My problem with delicious is that it's too hard to get links in to the damn thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> comments on links rss feeds of my links</comment>


Show HN: My startup, Compilr, an online IDE & compiler. Has over 30,000 users - <AUTHOR> http://www.compilr.com/

<comment><USER2> Random suggestion: I think it would be awesome if your landing page let me write code.. Knowing how it 'feels' to write (and run!) a Hello World without registering, etc. would be awesome. Kinda like the MongoDB shell that's on their website. Love that thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is another great idea. It would be cool to create a sort of paste bin like ideone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm trying to figure out the advantages of this over a regular IDE, etc. Simply the fact that it's all on the cloud? What problem are you trying to solve? (I don't mean to sound interrogative, I'm just genuinely curious about your motivation behind this). It certainly looks neat and will check it out for myself.

<comment><USER2> I think there are some interesting upsides.. I already really love collaborating with GitHub.. the opportunity to take things a step further, pair-program remotely, or fix a unit test from a computer not running a full development environment might be pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> That is true. I know someone else brought up integration with version control systems (Edit: I see from the blog it's something they're working towards). Furthermore, I'm curious if it allows for offline work on the code as well (if you're going to be riding a train, and you want to download the latest version, edit it, and then reupload). Though I guess with the increasing availability of internet access everywhere this might become less of an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have a feature that allows you to Import and Export from the IDE. So before you get on the train just export and once you have internet access just import.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great site, though things are running a little sluggish for me. The homepage took a good ~30 second to load for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's running a little slow here too. It might actually be the amount of traffic hitting our website right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google should buy these guys and integrate their stuff into google docs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like a good plan. I hope Google is reading this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this has a ton of potential. Coding is one of the few things now that I don't do directly in the cloud, and keeping my various systems' development environments up to date is something I'd rather not deal with.

Something that'd make this perhaps awesome would be the ability to invite people to your editing session and collaboratively edit and debug code with them. My ideal IDE would be one where code is stored in an abstract syntax tree format internally rather than files, and I could define my rules for how I like code formatted independently of other people who want to work on my code. Also, have you looked at the Bespin/Skywriter editor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Team collaboration is one major feature we are looking into adding. It could be setup two different ways depending on how the team would like to function. But essentially everyone could have their own codebase, or there could be one source code that everyone works from.

I haven't check out Bespin yet, but will do now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The design for syntax highlighting is pretty clever, and makes that feature much more responsive than most in-browser editors. The current line is always black text on a light blue background... and then when you move the cursor to a new line, the highlighting is processed.

I've implemented that kind of thing in the past, and making it perform well is always a ton of work. This approach is much more elegant and gets you 90% of the value. I like it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. I'd personally like to add personalizition to the IDE so you can customize the colors and editor however pleases you.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> About 2 years ago, we launched Compilr.com on Reddit. Compilr is an online IDE and compiler for languages like Java, C#, and VB. Today, we are working hard on Compilr and are really happy about its recent growth.

In just the last year we have grown the traffic about 400%. The userbase has grown from 3,000 at the beginning of 2010 to 32,000 users. We expect our userbase will be well over 100,000 by the end of this year.

<comment><USER8> How many of your users are actively using the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd rather not disclose our specifics at this time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was looking through the public projects and think a language filter would be great. Currently it just shows pages and pages of projects that I'd have to navigate.

I think it could be a nice and different way to learn new code instead of using github or other sources to look through code.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great idea. Eventually we'd like to have a keyword search...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So far (a) it's super buggy (e.g. clicking on one of "my projects" sent me to someone else's project of the same name). (b) it's very slow (it took something like a minute just to get the IDE running). (c) with a PHP project at least I have no earthly idea how to actually see it running.

<comment><AUTHOR> This issues may have been from some caching that was enabled. We have since disabled it. Try clearing your cookies and refresh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any way that the code can be run? If I write some php code can I run it somewhere? This is only a text editor with highlighting? It would be cool if it had everything related to a project, running, debugging etc not only a plain editor :(

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment PHP, C++ and Ruby can not be compiled or executed. All three require a substantial backend, but we are working on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can see myself using such a web based IDE. However, I dont know what I'm buying at compilr. There is no demo of the product. How it works? a video presentation or screenshot presentation is needed on home page.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can create an account for free and give it a shot. In the future we will add a video and a features overview list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is there no FAQ / Help page. I was looking around to figure if the site helps to run / debug as well. After 10 minutes of searching, i was still not able to locate this information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping to have some video tutorials built beforehand, we have just been swamped. But there definitely needs to be a help page for users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does it have source control integration? I've got to believe it does, otherwise you would not have so many users, but I found no info about it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at this time. This is top priority in 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any plans for python support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we'd like to add this in the future. We have had a number of requests for it.</comment></comment>


Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent's Stealth Takeover of America - <AUTHOR> https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america <comment><USER2> How stealthy is this takeover, really?

You'd have to be blind not to see that the wealthy are taking over.

Money is power, and some people are much better at getting their hands on money/power than others. Regardless of whether such money/power is "deserved" (which can be argued endlessly either way), we as a society really have to question whether we want a society where the overwhelming majority of people are screwed, and a tiny minority gets to own everything/everyone, call the shots, make the laws, and order the rest of us around.

We and our children are going to be shining these people's shoes for generations to come. Is that the future we want?

<comment><USER3> The article is positing a how and why, not merely pointing out the fact. The stealth I guess being that the how/why may be different then some may have thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happened to this item? Looks like it was censored out completely from HN posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean?

A previous submission of the same article was flagged to death, so I thought I'd try again. But I'm not seeing the "[flagged]" label...

<comment><USER4> It disappeared from the front page in an instant, and wasn't listed anywhere in further pages down.

<comment><AUTHOR> I encourage you to post it again, if you think it's worth reading... I saw that it was posted before (and your comment) and immediately flagged. I reposted it because I thought it was important and unfairly flagged...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CipherCloud used DMCA Takedown on StackExchange discussion of their cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/250/ciphercloud-dmca-notice <comment><USER2> What's interesting is that there is a whole ecosystem of companies like CipherCloud that do the minimum required to provide solutions for those interested in "compliance," not "security."

My sense has been that their customers are predominately those bound by things like HIPPA or PCI, who want to use cloud services, but can't do it with a straight face unless they can say they're "encrypting" their data.

What their customers want isn't security; it's the minimum required that will allow them to use salesforce.com. Incriminating details on StackExchange aren't a problem because their customers don't already know CipherCloud is insecure, they're a problem because it would make it harder for customers to say they're in compliance with a straight face.

<comment><USER3> I've mirrored Emil Vokstrom's mirror[1] here[2] and I encourage HNers outside of the US to do the same and post here.

[1] - <http://lajm.eu/emil/dump/ciphercloud-security.html>

[2] - <http://securitybookreviews.eu/ciphercloud/>

<comment><USER4> Mirror of Google's webcache, including images:

<http://bdsatish.in/math/crypto-se-3645/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think "used" needs be replaced with the word "abused". It's appropriate here.

With no penalty for false DMCA claims, it's a "stop us if you can" mentality.

The real reason may have been the conclusion that "Ciphercloud is NOT doing homomorphic encryption" ?

(but google cache still works)

<comment><USER6> The penalty for materially misrepresenting a DMCA claim is actual damages plus costs and attorney fees. That's automatic, written into the bill, unlike many other torts/crimes where you need exceptional circumstances to get attorneys fees in addition to the damages.

<comment><USER7> Except that 512(f) of DMCA is practically unenforceable [1], since the standard is to prove that they "knowingly materially" misrepresented:

[1] [http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/04/another_512f_cl...](http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/04/another_512f_cl_1.htm)

<comment><USER8> So, it's not practically unenforceable. The case Eric is citing appears to be a case where Someone has an actual good faith but unreasonable belief that they have a cause of action.

That eliminates the "knowingly" part. A lot of DMCA claims, including the one in the OP, are being filed by lawyers or companies who will have a much harder time showing they have a good faith but unreasonable belief. They are basically going to have to argue they are idiots. The second you can show bad faith, i have trouble believing (and I don't know of any cases where ..) a court would not impute knowledge.

Basically, you want them to have to consider your affirmative defenses (which is what fair use is). While i don't necessarily disagree, to be fair, this would be wholly inconsistent with almost every other area of law.

For example, if i file a negligence claim against you, _you_ bear the burden of proving any affirmative defense to my claim, such as assumption of risk. I don't have to consider it at all when I file my claim, and if you don't prove your defense, i win. This is true no matter _how valid_ your defense may be.

<comment><USER9> But what are the 'actual damages' in this case, it would be hard to argue a monetary damage to Stack Exchange. So the most you could 'win' from CipherCloud for their abuse would be your legal costs. Hard to justify taking that action.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you would get some nominal damages, plus any actual loss you could prove (IE the money of the people who spent time processing your DMCA request, plus how much you would have earned from ads on the post) or, and if they did it repeatedly, you may get something more (Punitive damages are rare in contract law, but possible).

Look, as much as I don't like it, this is a tradeoff. On one side, you have the fact that websites like this would normally be liable for _everything_ they publish. DMCA says "we'll fix that for you", the cost being "if you want safe harbor, and someone with a good faith belief sends a takedown notice, you honor it".

If StackExchange really believed the material was non-infringing, they could always ignore the DMCA takedown, and force CipherCloud to sue them. They didn't choose to take that risk. Newspapers have the same issue, FWIW: They get threatened all the time by bad actors (and not just for defamation of public figures, which the are mostly protected from). They just often choose to take the risk and force bad actors to sue them.

It's not at all clear what you think the solution is. If you institute harsh penalties for filing "bad" DMCA requests, all that would happen would be large numbers of lawsuits over DMCA requests, bad or good, because it would likely be profitable. You really think torrentfreak/isohunt/et al wouldn't just start filing suits over every single DMCA request they receive? What do they have to lose? They wouldn't have to win many suits to make money off it.

If you have a good solution, i'd love to hear it :)

I realize how odd this sounds, and i really do hate the way content companies/et al abuse the DMCA process, but one doesn't need to look very hard at history to see what lawyers in general will do if you make it profitable (see the history of rule 11 sanctions, particularly, the period from 1983 to 1993, or you know, recent prop 65 litigation, resulting in everything in the world having "the state of California believes this may cause cancer" labels on it ).

<comment><USER10> >You really think torrentfreak/isohunt/et al wouldn't just start filing suits over every single DMCA request they receive? What do they have to lose?

Money? Time? It wouldn't make any sense for them to litigate the cases they would obviously lose when they could choose the subset of cases where the take down issuer clearly has no copyright in the material in question -- which is the whole idea.

You're also giving the money to the wrong party. It doesn't make any sense to give YouTube or Tumblr the right to sue for bad take downs, if they thought they were bad they could just not execute them. The right for redress should be for the user who posted the material, not the intermediary. Which solves your problem with torrent sites filing frivolous claims. Do you honestly think release groups are going to get into the business of filing frivolous lawsuits against content owners? As soon as they identified themselves and consented to jurisdiction they would be counter-sued for infringement or arrested.

<comment><USER11> You're not following his reasoning to its conclusion. The people who run Isohunt surely don't want to spend their time writing court filings. But they'd be sitting on top of a mountain of potential claims, which would prove lucrative if even a tiny percentage resulted in damages. Unscrupulous law firms would notice and send Isohunt offers; at some point, it would become irrational of Isohunt not to accept one of them.

<comment><USER10> Isohunt is the intermediary. If they don't like a takedown notice then they can just not execute it; they don't need any redress from the courts. The plaintiffs with standing should be the end users who posted the material that was removed.

>But they'd be sitting on top of a mountain of potential claims, which would prove lucrative if even a tiny percentage resulted in damages.

Setting aside that Isohunt is the wrong party, yes, there are a mountain of take downs from which some small percentage should result in damages. But you can identify those cases ahead of time -- you know perfectly well you aren't going to win a case where you posted Fast & Furious 6 to Isohunt and Universal Studios issued a take down for it, there is no point in even trying. And if you do try then you're effectively admitting your own liability for copyright infringement when you have to assert you posted that material in order to get standing to sue.

The cases lawyers will want to take are the ones they think they can win -- and as long as they're right, that's what they're _supposed_ to do. That's the whole idea.

Are you arguing that the situations where the take down is in a grey area (e.g. fair use) will create too much litigation? I don't really see that happening. On the one hand, the existence of penalties would create a disincentive for copyright holders to wantonly issue take downs in questionable cases, and if there was no take down then there is nothing to litigate. Then, in the consequently much reduced number of edge cases, in order to claim a take down was fraudulent a plaintiff would have to admit in court to posting the material and thus to liability for copyright infringement if the take down was legitimate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that the answer below the question contains this link to the Google cache of the original article that was taken down:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FYBbAFU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FYBbAFUycYQJ:crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/3645/how- is-ciphercloud-doing-homomorphic-encryption+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

There doesn't seem to be anything in there that looks like an infringement of anyone's copyright.

<comment><USER13> Aren't DMCA takedowns required, under penalty of perjury, to assert a non- frivolous copyright claim? Is there any recourse for what appears to be clear abuses of the DMCA?

<comment><USER6> There is recourse against truly false claims made in bad faith, but it's not the penalty of perjury part. All you swear under penalty of perjury is that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of some copyright allegedly infringed (i.e. you're not filing a claim about someone else's work).

Here's the actual recourse created by the bill:

> (f) MISREPRESENTATIONS- Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents > under this section-- (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) > that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or > misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and > attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner > or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is > injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider > relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the > material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed > material or ceasing to disable access to it.

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c105:6:./temp/~c105aLN...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c105:6:./temp/~c105aLNxl3:e57148):

<comment><USER14> Note that the EFF is trying to prosecute a case over this clause [1]. IANAL, but it seems to be hard to hold someone responsible for a bad DMCA notice unless they specifically knew that it was bad (rather than merely being sloppy and sending notices without adequately considering fair use). Whether that is the case for this notice could theoretically be found out through discovery.

[1] <https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If something can be destroyed by the truth, then it should be.

If a crypto company abuses DMCA to fight this, then they deserve the Streisand effect. You should send the materials to someone in a free country where DMCA doesn't apply and speech is still free, and they can host the documents and discussion.

<comment><USER16> I haven't seen the DMCA notice. I think the screenshots are the things being DMCAd. If so, they clearly fall under fair use.

Someone should issue a counter notice. And get them put back up.

What's interesting to me is what happens if StackExchange put these back up, and then the cryptocompany sends a DMCA to SE's hosts.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it the same thing then? Just send a counter-notice to SE's hosts?

Of course, that doesn't stop all of Stack Exchage from being down for "10 business days" in the meantime. Should be interesting to see the public response to that if it actually happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now let the Streisand effect do its work...

(I made a snapshot of the page from Google's cache only to discover that at least two others used the very same service within the last hour to do exactly the same...and there are a few services to snapshot web pages.)

<comment><USER18> Here's one. DMCA claim is bullshit. This is fair use: [http://static.rubbingalcoholic.com/images/temp/ciphercloud.p...](http://static.rubbingalcoholic.com/images/temp/ciphercloud.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google cache of question in...question (lol): [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FYBbAFU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FYBbAFUycYQJ:crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/3645/how- is-ciphercloud-doing-homomorphic-encryption+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER17> That looks really horrible and I am somewhat tempted to write and publish a GreaseMonkey script that does bad things to CipherCloud protected pages...

<comment><USER19> Why would you (or anyone) deliberately try to hurt a company? Just because their tech is not 'on par'? Please think about how it would hurt that company and the employees (and their families!).

<comment><USER17> Why would a company (deliberately) try to sell a false sense of security to anyone whose knowledge of cryptography is not 'on par'? Please think about how it might hurt these customers and their employees (and their families!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Putting the merits of their technology aside, I've had numerous unpleasant experiences working with the CipherCloud Founders as both a Salesforce Partner and Customer. They use fear tactics to scare prospects into believing a) their data is unsafe in the cloud and b) their competition uses inferior encryption algorithms.

This DMCA takedown is unfortunately just another of their "just try and stop us" tactics.

</comment><comment><USER21> In a situation like this, who files the counter-claim(s) to get the content restored?

I would SE as an organization cannot, as they are the safe harbor in this case, but it sounds like the takedown notice wasn't specific enough for the relevant users to know what they can leave up. Does each user involved need to counter-claim so that SE can put the question and answers back up? Can one user claim that nothing on the site was infringing and have that be enough to protect SE?

</comment><comment><USER22> When a company does something like this, whether or not the claims/criticisms are actually true, their actions tacitly imply that they believe that the claims are true. In other words, terrible PR/technical brand management.

</comment><comment><USER23> The original question and answers has been put back up, without the CipherCloud screenshots.

[http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/3645/how-is- cipher...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/3645/how-is-ciphercloud- doing-homomorphic-encryption)

</comment><comment><USER24> We should start a collection of these kinds of stories as case studies in why laws allowing any entity to legally compel removal of content are ripe for abuse.

DMCA as a law isn't even that ridiculous or reprehensible; it mostly offers protection for websites that have user-submitted content. And yet here we are.

The damages clause needs to be strengthened if we wish to continue having free speech on the internet.

<comment><USER25> EFF has a collection of DMCA abuses: <https://www.eff.org/takedowns>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now stackexchange forwarded the DMCA notice to the involved users. <http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/250/180>

CipherCloud claim copyright infringement on the three images used to evidence the posts.

They also claim that certain statements in the posts are false, misleading defaming. While some statements look indeed wrong, others (in particular the determinism claim) are clearly evidenced in screenshots. They hint that their actual product might use different encryption from the demo video.

</comment><comment><USER26> Before takedown: <http://imgur.com/8r9cDxS>

</comment><comment><USER27> More comments are on the duplicate (now dead) submission [1].

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579615>

</comment><comment><USER28> Freedom of speech must include that random company x cannot take down your internet discussion using some strange acronym as an excuse.

Encryption and security does usually not get any better by pretending its secure and not letting anyone dig around the solution.

<comment><USER29> _Encryption and security does usually not get any better by pretending its secure and not letting anyone dig around the solution._

Indeed. Schneier has some excellent discussion on this topic, singling out closed source encryption as _always_ eventually being cracked, and the security world's consideration of open source as a pre-requisite for security:

<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9909.html>

I've never understood how anyone with at least an ounce of intelligence can claim that something is more secure just because it's closed source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> DMCA'd CipherCloud discussion on stackexchange online again (minus images). The Copyright part of the notice only covered the images and stackexchange apparently didn't consider the text part of the posts a ToS violation.

I expanded my analysis, but you'll need to check the original material for evidence since the embedded images were subject to the notice.

<http://crypto.stackexchange.com/q/3645/180>

</comment><comment><USER18> Situations like this really highlight how out of step the DMCA is with peoples' right to free speech and fair use. DMCA takedowns put too much compliance burden on individuals who are unaware of or intimidated by the counter-notice process.

At the very least, there should be more stringent requirements for legitimate takedown claims and stricter penalties for abusing the process.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if doing something similar to Ciphercloud, using a homomorphic encryption library like libScarab[0], would actually make it secure. I guess I still don't understand what Ciphercloud does.

[0] <https://hcrypt.com/scarab-library/>

<comment><USER31> FHE is far too slow for any practical use. In a few more years, things might be different, but for now anyone marketing a practical FHE solution is probably lying.

<comment><USER30> I'm still trying to find performance numbers that prove it impractical. Otherwise, it just sounds like a problem that could be mitigated by clustering.

<comment><USER31> Here are some results from a research team that has been on the forefront of FHE implementations; note that this has been improved on significantly since last August, but you are still looking at minutes of computation for relatively small functions:

[http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2012/CRYPTO/presentatio...](http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2012/CRYPTO/presentation/17-1-Smart.pdf)

Also, throwing "clustering" at every problem is misguided. Not all problems are easily parallelized:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-complete>

<comment><USER30> Don't forget Amdahl's law and Gustafson's law on the limits of parallelizing when the problem isn't P-complete. Either way, I disagree with your conclusion that it is misguided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just have someone put it on wikileaks?

<comment><USER32> Or snapshots in a torrent file...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:crypto....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/3645/how- is-ciphercloud-doing-homomorphic-encryption)

Has a version from Apr 12, 2013 15:33:47 GMT.

</comment><comment><USER34> So wrong answers (assuming they're wrong) and speculation are now speech that can legally be suppressed? You can't say anything that's wrong or a guess?

</comment><comment><USER16> Did CipherCloud get Google's permission to use the GMail logo on their website?

Or Microsoft's permission to use the MS Office 365 logo?

</comment><comment><USER35> Just listen to Cryptography I in coursera.

Never ever, use your own algorithm for encryption. Always use tried, tested and known algos. And don't even change it one bit (literally!).

Only the key remains secret.

</comment><comment><USER36> long story short, stackexchange didn't want to lose a potential ad sale. It's not good for their business to have users question products advertised on stackexchange network.</comment>


Tumblr will be joining Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://staff.tumblr.com/post/50902268806/news

<comment><USER2> How many different ways have we heard the same thing?

> So what's new? Simply, Tumblr gets better faster. The work ahead of us > remains the same – and we still have a long way to go! – but with more > resources to draw from.

Wow, someday someone's going to get caught plagiarizing. An acquisition rarely leads to "more resources to draw from" and more often leads to neglect. Yahoo clearly has a lot riding on this deal and will surely make a strong effort to disprove the doubters on this one. However, unless they're banking the company on Tumblr (doubtful), then it's hard to imagine more resources going into Tumblr.

The only time a large company's resources bring value is when the acquiring company has legal and lobbying resources a small upstart could never afford. YouTube and PayPal are probably the best examples of this.

<comment><USER3> YouTube probably benefited from the deep pockets of Google since it had no monetization strategy and used crazy amounts of bandwidth and storage (especially for the time).

<comment><USER2> Bandwidth and storage costs were surely a growth pain. However, the thing that was inevitably going to sink them was the $1 billion lawsuit they were facing from Viacom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Signed off in true tumblr form:

      Fuck yeah,
      David

<comment><USER5> Yeah maybe I'm just cynical.. but something about that just seems a little forced, like 'look we're definitely still cool, see i swore!'.

Also comes off like he's slightly resisting the merge with Yahoo, which seems a little strange given they've just dropped 1 billion on them.

<comment><USER4> Totally possible. I was referring to how fuckyeahX.tumblr.com is a popular formula for Tumblr blogs that focus on X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it so common to refer to Yahoo! in the first person as "Marissa?"

I know she's the CEO, but I never hear anyone call Microsoft "Steve," Google "Sergey and Larry," AirBnB "Joe," Apple "Tim," etc. Why is Marissa such a big deal?

<comment><USER7> I think that her personal brand is a plus for Yahoo, so I doubt that she or Yahoo! minds this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > We're not turning purple. Our headquarters isn't moving. Our team isn't > changing. Our roadmap isn't changing.

Spending 1.1 billion on a company that says it's "not turning purple" may have some impact on morale in Sunnyvale and on Wall St.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could someone explain something to me? When yahoo pays the 1.1B, who does that money go to? Does it go to the original investors apportioned out based on how much equity they have?

<comment><USER10> It goes to the stock holders. For a company at Tumblr's stage, probably about 55% of stock will be owned by VCs/angels/other investors, 20% by employees, and maybe 25% by founders.

It will also include signing bonuses and golden handcuffs for employees, though that will be tiny relative to 1.1B, so it probably doesn't change the numbers much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> obviously worth a 'congrats' for a 7 year old company which build a pretty great community...

Does an "all cash" deal imply something about Yahoo stock valued as bearish?

<comment><USER12> 2 views \- Yahoo! values their stock more than their cash \- Tumblr and/or BOD doesn't value Yahoo! stock as much as cash</comment></comment>


First Recorded Usage of "Hacker" (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/

<comment><USER2> What about the 1959 TMRC Dictionary? [1]

      > HACKER: one who hacks, or makes them.
      > A hacker avoids the standard solution. The hack is
      > the basic concept; the hacker is defined in terms of it.

(edit: The article claims that the 1963 usage was the "first", however on reading the linked listserv.linguist.org posting by Fred Shapiro, it appears that it's the first citation that uses "hacker" with negative connotations.)

[1] [http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html](http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html) [2] [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi- bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ad...](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi- bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ads-l&P=R5831&1=ads-l&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4)

<comment><USER3> Here's what Shapiro says:

"The word "hacker" _in its well-known computing sense_ has a first citation of 1971 (contributed by me) in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Here is an earlier citation, _not precisely in a computing context_ but obviously the same term"

I interpret that as the only condition on the citation being "the well-known computing sense." He's definitely not saying "with negative connotations."

Even the phreaking stuff from the Tech is "not precisely in a computing context". I don't think the TMRC citation qualifies here, it's a very specific and different context (check some of its sibling entries), even if it shares some of that early magical MIT spirit.

But even then, the TMRC does also say:

"HACK: 1) something done without constructive end"

So, all in all, even taking the TMRC into account I think the origin of the word was already ambiguous, _which it is_. I think the small dash of mischievousness adds to the flavor of hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Growing up before the Internet was broadly available, the telephone network had a real magic to it and exploring it was really kind of addictive. These days most of us take communication completely for granted and are constantly communicating with people all over the world via SMS, IM, email, etc. often with no thought for how amazing it really is.

I read Exploding The Phone[1] last summer and I couldn't put it down. The first couple chapters are great for putting in perspective how amazing and novel this new network was to people vs. the way they communicated before. The rest of the book catalogs some great profiles of different (and some pretty famous) people who were drawn to tinkering with the system for various reasons. Some are outright criminals and some of them are like many of those in the HN crowd, just without such overwhelmingly accessible general computing, networking, and open-source software to build with.

I grew up just on the tail end of any sort of telephone hacking and exploration that was still going on and watched as BBSes were eventually made obsolete by the Internet. Reading the book was a really nostalgic experience and put me in touch with a lot of great memories while also allowing me to be thankful for the new opportunities to tinker and hack that are available to us these days, really at a much higher level.

[1] [http://explodingthephone.com](http://explodingthephone.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Steven Levy's "Hackers" [1] is a great book, which begins at MIT at the middle of the last century, with the kids who loved model trains, and going out and messing with traffic lights around Boston.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Origins of The Hacking Jacket

[http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the- hac...](http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the-hacking- jacket/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is that MIT article real? It's almost too good to be true.

<comment><USER8> You can see a scanned version of The Tech from November 20, 1963 in the paper's archives at [http://tech.mit.edu/V83/PDF/V83-N24.pdf](http://tech.mit.edu/V83/PDF/V83-N24.pdf).</comment></comment>


Deploying a Storage Server with 24 NVMe Drives - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWjOh0Ph8uM <comment><AUTHOR> (edited title from the clickbait, "This Server Deployment was HORRIBLE). It's worth the watch to see how they dealt with Windows and Linux kernel problems, and how their video editors didn't notice a difference!</comment>


is a degree in computer science worth it? - <AUTHOR> http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I think the URL you're looking for is:

[http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2008/03/education-is-it- wort...](http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2008/03/education-is-it-worth- it.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not anymore. It's a stop on the way to becoming a project manager.</comment>


Are you interested? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5919415/are-you-interested?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_facebook&utm_source=lifehacker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

<comment><USER2> Much discussion from 2 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4124028></comment>


The Downside of Monopolies in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://smist08.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/the-downside-of-monopolies-in-tech/ <comment><USER2> I'm honestly surprised anyone has to write an article like this in 2020.

We've all seen the results since the 1999/2000 Microsoft trial. A few thing works out (youtube), most shrivel on the vine. Consumers probably lose.</comment>


What CEOs are reading - <AUTHOR> http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/what-ceos-are-reading <comment><USER2> Judging from this I would go all in on Nokia.</comment>


Differential Privacy: The Basics - <AUTHOR> http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/08/differential-privacy-the-basics/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting work, especially the "celebrity cab tracking" in the second article.

However interesting differential privacy and injection of random noise into data sets to decrease privacy risks, it seems to me that the most likely result is an "arm's race" between the "anonymizers" and the "deanonymizers": You inject random noise to protect those in the dataset, I develop more sophisticated algorithms to filter out random noise...

...you develop "intellgent random noise" such that the injected data looks more likely to be real data, I make my algorithms that much more sophisticated, looking for ersatz data that isn't random enough (think of the six-sigma anecdote about sets of bolts or screws that "too sharp" cut-offs in their variation - indicating they'd been manually filtered).

I'm not suggesting the work is useless, but that instead one must do it eyes wide open, knowing that one faces multiple talented motivated "adversaries" who will apply their skills to deanonymization of that which you have anonymized - so be careful about the breadth and depth of claims concerning the level of protection afforded by these techniques.</comment>


Andrew Chen's blog: Lessons learned adding messaging to a notes app - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.co/2014/07/01/lessons-learned-adding-messaging-to-a-notes-app-guest-post/

<comment><USER2> my brain is blow by reading this, after years of not touching an iphone if not to see how my farm games are (not) doing or testing how something looks like in the browser.

Android has this solved in the platform level. Click share (whichever icon it has... sigh) and select your hearts desire sharing medium. even another app. in fact you can do - notes app -> share -> pgp app -> share -> email.

IOS sure is dead in the water.</comment>


Show HN: Joyvite – Invite-your-friends-button as a Service [updated] - <AUTHOR> https://joyvite.com/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> OP here, if you have any comment or suggestion please deliver it to me. Thanks a lot!</comment>


India's missed call culture - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/mobile/indias-missed-call-mobile-ecosystem-2/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of when I was going to college (1988-1991) and the "Collect Call" system was becoming automated (all landlines) - with a collect call, it would be the recipient who would pay the charges, _if they accepted_. The automated system would give you a chance to say your name, and then it would play a message to the recipient "You have a collect call from <Play Name that was just recorded>. Do you accept charges?"

Of course, you could say anything as your name including, "Let's go for pizza 8:00" or "Won't be able to make study group tonight" - if you said it quickly enough. The person at the other end would here the message, and then decline to receive the call.

Caller ID wasn't as common - I'm presuming the missed call culture leverage caller ID for a lot of it's signalling mechanism. (I.E. If you are a taxi, and get a call that cuts off after 1 ring from a number, it means come pick that person up. If you get 2 rings then it means call me back, etc...)

<comment><USER3> I know a few people who got really burned by the automated collect call system. The phone company (Sasktel in this case) started reviewing the recordings and charged the calls where something other than a name was used.

<comment><USER2> Charged who? The person being called? That would open them up to a pretty trivial attack - call their answering machine with something other than a name. The person calling? Usually you would do this from a pay phone (Remember those?) - so no luck there.

In my case, it was BC Tel, and I don't ever recall anyone ever getting charged throughout my college existence.

<comment><USER4> A trivial attack... like the one where you can send anyone at all any number of text messages, and THEY have to pay to receive them?

(This is how text messages work in the USA.)

<comment><USER5> I've always wondered about that. In the US, could I send someone I hated $100,000 worth of text messages and plunge them into debt?

<comment><USER6> It differs between different networks, but when I send a message from my Virgin Mobile in the US, I pay along with the recipient.

Mobile tariffs in the US, especially pay as you go, make me feel lucky to live in Britain.

<comment><USER7> (I'm a Brit living in the US.)

There is nothing nefarious or stupid going on in the US. In most other countries in the world there is a separate area code for mobile phones. Calling a mobile phone area code is considerably more expensive than calling a land line (for the caller). To get an idea of the difference lookup rates for any international calling card. For example the first one I found charges 1c per minute to UK landlines and 5c per minute to UK cellular. For many countries there is a 1:10 difference in cost.

So now we have established that calls involving a cellular endpoint are more expensive virtually everywhere. In places that have a separate area code for cells it will be the caller paying the additional cost.

In the US (and elsewhere participating in the North American Numbering Plan) it would be virtually impossible to allocate new area codes, so there is no way of knowing the recipient is a cellular phone. The only practical way of dealing with this is to make the recipient pay the extra which is exactly what happens. But someone is always paying! And a lot of people don't mind this, especially when mobile service was new. If you were a plumber on the go you didn't want people to think about calling a competitor on a landline while you had a cell because it was more expensive. Having all calls cost the same significantly reduces friction for people who want to communicate.

Because the recipient is paying for incoming calls and that person is making the purchase of the incoming minutes there is very strong pricing competition. Incoming and outgoing minutes are relatively very cheap in the US. So much so that the carriers have to nickel and dime people on everything else in order to make up the necessary ARPU.

<comment><USER8> love India!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Several years ago in Turkmenistans first 5 seconds of the call was free. While I was in high school, we were using that feature as a radio.: A: I am in canteen(hang up) B: Coming(hang up) A: Bring chemistry book (hang up) B: Ok

We could talk like this whole day without paying a penny

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a HUGE market here for someone to create a free texting app that encodes each character in the length of time before the call has been ended (like morse code, but with no dots, only dashes).

The application would abstract the handshake+message delivery away and hopefully would find ways to reliably send a character in hundred milliseconds, instead of seconds.

If the application becomes successful, you would have live with being the one to make carriers the world over to begin charging when a phone BEGINS ringing, instead of a successful connection. (or remove the loophole in another way, like charge on the 3rd attempt.)

Alternatively don't send individual characters, from a single call the user can choose one of 5-10 default messages (preset or mutually-agreed-upon- inadvance) like "OK" "Be there in 5 minutes" "No" etc via the length of a single call using a mobile phone application.

You can have entire conversations via mobile for free :D

<comment><USER11> > If the application becomes successful, you would have live with being the > one to make carriers the world over to begin charging when a phone BEGINS > ringing, instead of a successful connection. (or remove the loophole in > another way, like charge on the 3rd attempt.)

They could also start messing up your careful timing. Then it would be much harder to convey information.

<comment><USER12> Some Indian providers already do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, this "missed call" was used in Japan extensively in the early 2000's, mainly to ask friends in the middle of the night whether they were still awake or not (kind of like the late-night instant message to a friend who is displayed as "away").

The act was called "One-Giri" (Giri is a conjugated form of "Kiru" which means _to cut_ or _hang up_ , in the case of a phone call)

<comment><USER14> But not anymore? What happened?

This missed call phenomena is fairly common in Sweden amongst children and teens with prepaid cards/plans.

<comment><USER13> I believe that during that time, text messages were charged per character (and hence an alternative to the "missed call" was to send a text message with one character - or perhaps it was even zero characters). I don't think regular data plans or messages/month plans existed back then (or at the least, were not prevalent)

Now, data plans are the norm and many users have unlimited (non-internet) data plans and can text message indiscriminately. Limited data plans do exist, but because the "culture" has shifted towards proper messaging, people no longer send empty messages or use missed calls)

(For some reference, I don't think Japan had unlimited bandwidth internet of any kind in the late 90's, while U.S. users at least had the option of dial up unlimited monthly internet access; Earthlink, for one. The lack of a fixed cost cellphone message plan is thus in line with their overall telecommunication tradition)

If there are any users who lived in Japan and is more knowledgeable about the subject than I am, I will gladly be corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We were doing this 30 years ago in the US, usually when someone's flight landed and they needed a ride.

You initiate a collect call and tell the operator a bogus name. Operator calls home and the call is rejected. Ride is on it's way. It got a little easier in the 80s when the system got automated and Mom would get a collect call from "COMEPICKMEUPATUNITEDDOORSEVEN"

</comment><comment><USER16> A phenomenon I noticed in certain Latin American countries: there are vendors walking around and on every street corner advertising "Minutos" who carry a set of mobile phones on strings which they will rent to you. The main reason is that calls between phones on the same network are much cheaper, so it enables people to own a single phone and dodge the higher inter-network charges when making calls.

</comment><comment><USER17> Do cell phone minutes work differently in India? I was under the impression that I pay for minutes on my phone even when receiving a call. In which case I don't understand how hanging up after the first ring only to have someone call me back would save anything.

<comment><USER18> The US and Canada are the only countries I know of where you pay for spam (as in, pay when receiving a call or a text).

There might be others, but in advanced economies (at least) the concept is generally found ludicrous.

<comment><USER19> Mobile pricing in Canada is entirely mental. The charges carriers charge here is crazy compared to europe or asia. I had hoped that when we went from 3 to 6+ carriers things would improve, but they haven't. :(

<comment><USER20> Mobilicity has $12.50/month unlimited calling plans now... I wouldn't say things haven't improved. If you use the upstart carriers you're paying a lot less. What hasn't happened is that Rogers or Bell or Telus have reduced their prices to match. Presumably they are anticipating that at some point they can simply acquire the new carriers and fold them in, like Fido or Virgin Mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know why missed calls work for personal use.

But the use case described just sounds like an 800 number replacement. A better solution would be to have an 800 number than a missed call feature that calls you back do you don't have to pay.

<comment><USER22> Except if the cost of the 800 number incoming calls is more than the cost of however you can minimise your outgoing calls.

There was a similar situation in Australia where long-distance phone card providers wanted to ensure their relevancy in an age of decreased landline connections. Mobile phone calls to 800 numbers still cost the caller money and the reciever (which is why the telcos agreed this year to exempt counselling hotlines).

So instead they decided to setup hotline mobile phone connections to enter your phone card details, thus taking advantage of inside-same-network free calling. The telcos had none of it and just charged premium rates for those specific normal looking mobile phone numbers. I bet Indian telcos will be looking to do the same anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always thought most mobile operators offered a "please call me" service? In South Africa, you can send a 'message' using USSD (ie *140#<number>) to let someone know that they should call you. You have a limit of 100 a day or something.

Is this common in other countries as well? (Clearly not in India?)

<comment><USER24> I have never heard of this in scandinavia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> But i guess the networks more than make up for it by having a huge margin for sms. They shouldn't really complain.

</comment><comment><USER26> Network providers should think upon decreasing the cost of SMS instead of complaining about missed calls. It would give them the opportunity to monetise as well as free up the network to some extent.

And as for the 'missed call' culture, it's either used mostly by students or the poor peoples (a bitter truth of most Indians), in either of the case, it is mostly likely that none of them uses smart phones that can handle applications as mentioned in the comments here.

<comment><USER27> SMS expanded from "minimal messaging that utilised slack space in the system" to "primary use of the system for many people".

There could and should be a way to get free, minimal messaging, sent as the system has free space, working. That could be used alongside modern sms and mms systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember doing this as a teenager when we all started getting mobile phones (England). At first it was just to annoy people, we'd call it "pranking", where you'd call someone and hang-up before they answered; but later it evolved into a "I have no credit, please call me back" signal.

The phenomenon seemed to die off pretty much exactly at the same time as when everyone got jobs and/or money.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I was in the USA travelling and wanted to call someone on Skype back in the UK, I used the ring once hang up technique to signal for them to get logged onto Skype or text me back to say they cannot. When inthe USA on a UK mobile, it's about $1.50 per minute to make a call, and $0.50 to send a text. It's free to receive texts though so this hack let me communicate basically for free.

</comment><comment><USER30> In the developed world (except the US and Canada) voice calls are cheap and inclusive. Kids in the UK have phones for £10 a month, happily funded by parents, and they either hit a limit and have to top up or have enough inclusive minutes.

The developing world isn't going to be so quick to hand over its hard earned money to big corporates. The apps designed around missed calls as a communicative action are genius: you could use it in a variety of services: "Miss call Dominoes and we will send you your regular order within 30 minutes.... Could cause havoc too :) ( maybe need a railways return call to double check the order, on second thoughts...)

Maybe we are missing a trick here with consumers? A missed call is faster and more convenient than a text message... Would be a great marketing or polling tool

<comment><USER31> I think that as consumers our reflex is to send a text when a missed call might be faster/more convenient. For example, if I'm picking up a friend, I'll text "I'm here" or "here", whereas I could simply make a missed call and my friend sees that it's me on the display and goes outside because she's expecting me.

Making a missed call would just not occur to me, but when I moved to Lithuania for a few years it became a habit because that's what everyone does over there (and in other places where there is a missed call culture and people have several cell phones to take advantage of cheap/free calling plans within a given carrier network). It's faster by a few seconds than sending a text or calling the person and telling them.

Once you're in the missed call mindset, you see all kinds of situations where you can use it, but until you get in the mindset, the reflex will be to send a text or make a call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting as I don't think this would hurt the overall phone business as someone is always paying for the return call. However, I suppose this would tip in favor mainly of the landline companies and would be cutting profits from cell companies.

<comment><USER33> Keeps the networks super busy without paying for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article mentions average phone revenue in India, and I'm not sure if it was trying to make the link or not, but the missed call culture shouldn't affect overall Indian cell revenue rates too much since _someone_ ends up paying for the call. Exceptions would be phoning outside the country and the receiver having different rates than the sender.

Of course it makes a difference if, say, everyone using missed calls were with the same company. Then that company would fail...

Perhaps a solution (assuming one is desired) is for businesses to offer toll free numbers such that cell phone calls to them are payed for by them?

<comment><USER35> Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't the case such that when you place a call and immediately hang up, no one pays for that call, although unnecessary traffic is caused for the operator? In some of these cases the receiver might call back, and then that second call is paid for. But if this is really a culture in India, then the operators lines are used a lot all the time, even though no one is paying for these one ring calls.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I do assume no-one pays for the missed call. But as you say, the receiver pays for the subsequent return call, whereas otherwise, the original sender would have paid. Either way, assuming a call happens, someone pays, so if the article is implying this costs the Indian cell industry as a whole money, I'm not sure it's really true. Sure, increased overhead on the system is an issue, plus the exceptions I noted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have read similar articles a few years back. The "missed call culture" as people put it has been there for quite sometime, since the mobile revolution in India. However I would say one reason for this might be that voice mail is hardly used in India - if someone's phone is unreachable or switched off - when you try calling them, you hear a recorded message saying the other person is unreachable - unlike in the US when a lot of times you are just redirected to the receiver's voice mail box. I happen to be not very fond of voice mail :(

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if there is (or soon will be) an Android app / dialer that lets you "call" people with a missed call. Based on the little international number dialer I use (substituting a cheaper dialing code for + according to your instructions), you'd be able to support general dialing actions (e.g. dialing a phone number recognized in an email or web page) and might even be able to adjust the call log so you see a single outbound call, rather than a "missed call" and its response separately. I can see that being fairly useful.

</comment><comment><USER38> When leaving my grandparents' house for a long journey home, everybody was always instructed to give three rings when they get home safely. To this day I always let a phone ring three times before answering, partly in case it's an "I'm OK" message and partly because waiting for somebody to answer gives the caller time to think what they actually want to say.

My grandparents didn't have caller ID and so had no idea who was telling them they'd got home safely, but they could guess based on timings pretty well.

<comment><USER39> This works much less well in the days of digital call signalling. The "ringback tone" you hear -- the ringing in your earpiece when you call someone -- no longer corresponds in any way to the ring being generated on the other end. Ringback can start before or after ringing, so you can't even count on the number of seconds being the same, let alone the number of rings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I disagree with the author, I don't talk about those miser souls who think they can save enough money by these miss calls, but if you are specially talking about that miserable 'poor', the post is targeted for, understand now that a proper call is more appropriate than making just a miss call. If some of you are aware of mixed culture of urban and rural india in towns and small cities, then it's a norm for a taxi/auto [cab] drivers to make calls for their customers (I am not talking about professional cab companies, who provide cellphones to their drivers). Vegetable salespersons, electricians, plumbers .. there is a long list of these, it was an era when they were used to miss calls, but they will rather make a call today. However my take on this post is based on what I am observing in my surroundings, may be statistics say something else. The other reason of making a proper call can go like this : some telephone companies in India sell their sim 'free' and you get starting free talk time of 30/50/100 INR, these sim are sold in wholesale(obviously targeted for conversions ), if not free then they are there for nominal charges. Barrier to entry for making a call is very less, it is used for free talk time,internet(with indian speed) then some trash the sim, some of them don't mind making a local call on tariff like 1 paisa per second . [ 1 Rupees = 100 Paisa ]

</comment><comment><USER41> Even now (after the long distance call cost has drastically come down), when ever I receive a call from my parents, I instinctively cut it (making it a missed call for them) and call them back :). In last two years increased competition among telecom players pushed down costs so low that in a few years missed calls may not mean much...

</comment><comment><USER42> It's a shame this doesn't mention Zipdial <http://zipdial.com>

</comment><comment><USER43> This is also common in Africa.

<comment><USER44> As as well as in the Dominican Republic, from my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This behavior existed since early 90s in Lebanon.

"Necessity is the mother of invention"

</comment><comment><USER46> Tyler Durden: I *69 you, I never pick up my phone.

Indian: I missed called you, I never call from my phone.

</comment><comment><USER47> poke

</comment><comment><USER48> What is the average lifetime value of a customer too cheap to send a text message?

<comment><USER27> What is the average lifetime value of a customer too "cheap" to buy a full bottle of shampoo? The people who want that business sell sachets of shampoo. It's a model that works.

I guess if people are spending money sending text messages that's money that they're not spending on my business.</comment></comment>


Book: A Philosophy of Software Design – Meta Skills of a Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/meta-skills-of-a-software-engineer-bed411f6685e <comment><USER2> Thanks for this book tip!

Furthermore, this book was also discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331219)</comment>


DHS Seizes Aftermarket iPhone Screens from Prominent Right-To-Repair Advocate - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-screens-jessa-jones <comment><USER2> Does someone comment on whether an expansion of DHS authority is in progress? Should the Justice Department be involved? I didn't know they could raid domestic businesses and seize property, but it's very possible I was ignorant of it.

I wonder because of another story, in which ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS) raided a website that provided ads for prostitution. ICE made this claim in the article:

 _As the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is responsible for the enforcement of laws that promote the legitimate movement of people, goods and currency in domestic and foreign transactions. Our allegation with this case is that the business and its principals purported itself to be an escort service while promoting criminal acts, namely illegal prostitution._

The movement of "people, goods, and currency" sounds like a very wide remit, covering almost every economic transaction, any time someone takes a step on the sidewalk, and more. In fact, it sounds like they stretch even that to cover prostitution.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/raid-of- rentboy-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/raid-of-rentboy-an- escort-website-angers-gay-activists.html)

<comment><USER3> > they stretch even that to cover prostitution.

Considering the current president's habits, that can have serious national security repercussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't put logos you don't own on parts you sell. Why is it necessary to have logos on replacement parts anyway?</comment>


Ask HN: Companies that pay the most for Ruby devs - <AUTHOR>

I've been developing for awhile now, across most platforms and technologies.  I've had multiple products of my own, that most have failed, and now, I want to focus and work hard and do what I do best: churn out quality code for a lucky company.
I'm looking for companies that pay very well for Ruby dev's , that hopefully, are looking to hire awesome Ruby devs, thanks! <comment><USER2> _I 'm looking for companies that pay very well for Ruby dev's_

The answer you're looking for depends on two key factors:

1\. What part of the world you want answers from.

2\. What you consider to be "very well' paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Location doesn't matter or else I would have put that in the post

Very well is anything that people might consider "very well" that they're already getting. Or, an example would be, you heard Billy Bob Construction has a few Ruby jobs and they are paying stacks of cash

<comment><USER2> _Location doesn 't matter or else I would have put that in the post_

Can't see your logic here. A "very well" paid ruby dev in silicon valley will be paid vastly more than a "very well" paid ruby dev in London.

A very well paid, permanent ruby dev in London would see a salary somewhere between £80k - £90k.

There are a number of decent Ruby contractors in London earning £600 per day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not just start going on interviews? If you really are that good, you will get offers and can see how much you will be able to make.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am that good, I just rather see if theres any companies people have suggestions for before going out blindly and taking a chance of wasting the company's time and my own, if it's not a right fit off the bat

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What city?

<comment><AUTHOR> SF, LA, NYC, Chicago, Vancouver, Miami, Atlanta, DC, Austin, Madison, Las Vegas

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Github, heroku, twitter, any major ruby shop consider to be big pay pretty salary. I think these guys pay minimally 90k USD. Just look at glassdoor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thank you for the info (Glassdoor), that's helpful!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some non-Bitcoin digital currencies to watch out for? - <AUTHOR>

I'm fascinated by the ongoing saga of Bitcoin as one of the first decentralized digital currencies to get much traction (as well as the ensuing seizure, subpoena, and general regulatory intrusion that U.S. regulatory authorities are just beginning to mount) but I'd like to know: where else can I look to explore this brave new economic world?<p>Ripple is another decentralized, "open" system, that even purports to play nice with Bitcoin exchanges. I'd love to hear the opinion of HN on its viability and the viability of all such systems. <comment><USER2> Litecoin is one I've heard a lot about, and Namecoin is supposed to be a sort of Bitcoin-based DNS, taking the advantages to a different arena.

According to Wikipedia [1] all of the big cryptocurrencies are inspired by / based on Bitcoin.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies)</comment>


Perhaps the most amazing DNS hosting in the world... ever? - Point - <AUTHOR> https://pointhq.com/

<comment><USER2> How is that amazing? Both GratisDNS.dk and QuickDNS.dk offer roughly the same features, and they're gratis.</comment>


Microsoft launches Visual Studio Online, an online code editor - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/microsoft-launches-visual-studio-online-an-online-code-editor/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840397)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we've moved the comments there.</comment></comment>